A flurry of public and private sector dealmaking in recent weeks has raised the profile of a family of minerals that are crucial for much of modern technology. And for national security — which is a big reason for all the deals.
Most of the world's supply of processed rare earth elements and the rare earth-enhanced magnets used in powerful electric motors now comes from China. In recent years, China has weaponized its advantage by slapping on trade restrictions.
The U.S. government urgently is trying to develop a homegrown American supply chain so that it’s not reliant on one of its biggest geopolitical rivals.
The 17 metals are found in everything from cell phones, cars, and MRI machines in the civilian world to fighter jets, warships, missiles, tanks, and drones.
Several of the recent deals have involved a small startup company in Research Triangle Park called Vulcan Elements. It hopes to grow much larger.
"We just announced a $65 million round of Series A," said Vulcan CEO John Maslin on a recent day, showing a visitor around the factory floor.
Series A is startup lingo for a significant injection of money from investors. In this case, it's money that will help the company build a full-scale factory.
Vulcan is two years old and has been producing its rare earth magnets for less than six months. But already it has signed more than $10 million in deals with every branch of the military. In the past few weeks, it's also signed two contracts with mining and processing companies to supply it with the rare earth elements it needs.
Everything it uses — the ingredients, the machinery, the software — is free of any connection with China.
Maslin, a former Navy officer, said he's trying to help build not just a company but an industrial sector that’s crucial for national security, in terms of both the military and U.S. industry as a whole.
A broad array of products use rare earth elements and rare earth magnets. An F-35 fighter has about 900 pounds of them in things like its sophisticated targeting systems and various electric motors. A submarine can use more than 9,000 pounds.
Demand may jump even more with the rise of robots, wind power, electric vehicles, and AI, which all need the elements for various reasons.
Maslin said the only way to build the necessary supply chain is if government and industry work together.
"And if we do that in partnership with industry and continuing to work with the government, I think that this industry can go and solve the problem in the United States and in the West," he said.
Maslin said the company can make only about 10 tons of magnets a year, but hopes to raise its capacity to several hundred tons annually over the next couple of years and several thousand tons by the end of this decade.
Vulcan isn't the only rare earth elements-related company the government is bolstering.
The Trump Administration has aggressively cut deals to create a U.S.-centric supply chain, including a multibillion arrangement with a California company called MP Materials that runs the nation’s only major rare earth mining and processing operation.
The federal government made waves in the industry — and in U.S. business and political circles — by taking a major ownership stake in the company, which also received tens of millions of dollars from the Biden Administration.
Officials in the office of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy, which has spearheaded the Pentagon’s push to build the rare earth supply chain, didn’t respond to a request for an interview or to emailed questions.
But Laura Taylor-Kale, who served in that post during the Biden Administration and is now with the Council on Foreign Relations, said creating a reliable, domestic supply chain has long been a bipartisan priority in Washington.
She said the Biden Administration built on some of the executive orders that the first Trump administration put out about critical minerals, and similarly Trump’s second administration has used tools created under Biden.
"I think we've been on a continuum over the last eight years or so and really sharpening the toolkit that we have within the U.S. government to address strategic and critical materials," she said.
She said the Biden Administration created the first ever national defense industrial strategy and implementation plan, and it did crucial work with Congress to boost funding for critical minerals.
Other experts agree that the focus on rare earths has been bipartisan.
Gracelyn Baskaran is director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at Center for Strategic and International Studies.
She was interviewed from California, where she was visiting MP Materials to get a first hand look at the progress the company — and the nation — is making toward building a crucial part of the supply chain.
"If you come look at this mine, it's an incredible operation," she said.
She credited the Biden Administration for helping build out the infrastructure of the facility, as well as the Trump Administration for significantly accelerating the development of the industry.
"It has really been a team effort from both sides to get to where we are," Baskaran said.
One challenge for the supply chain effort is that some types of rare earth elements can’t be commercially mined domestically. So the U.S. has begun working with allies such as Australia, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia to source some of them elsewhere.
"It's about 'where is the geology,'" Baskaran said. "Critical minerals are quite a unique industry in that you can only work along the lines of the geology that God gave you."
Rare earths aren't actually rare, she said.
"They're everywhere," Baskaran said. "The big dilemma is where do you find a deposit that has the density to make it commercially viable?"
The U.S. is making serious progress, she said. Other things are helping, including initiatives to source rare earths by recycling them from old equipment and figuring out ways to use less of them in technology.
"We're going to be better in three years, five years," Baskaran said. "But realistically, before we are fully self-sufficient is five to 10 - probably close to 10 - years away."
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
